Hey, hey, welcome to the church home podcast with Judah Smith. My amazing husband. My name is Chelsea,

and he is about to give you an incredible message. And I know we are going to hear about Jesus and his love for you.

And if there's anything we can do as a church home community, we would love to serve you.

You can come to churchhome.org slash pastor chat, and we would love to have a conversation with you and just meet

you exactly where you are. Enjoy the message. Hey, welcome back. I'm so glad you are joining us for content this

month. We are talking about innocence. What if you could have a return to innocence?

And perhaps Jesus would like to give you that as a gift.

Now, for those just checking in with us, this is part three.

And I do want to be that guy saying, hey, please check out part one and part two.

If you can, part one will give you a little bit extra context for our characters in our story. We are reading from the book of Luke,

the ancient, magical, mystical book of Luke. And we're looking at Luke chapter 19. And one of my

favorite stories,

guy by the name of Zacchaeus interacting with my hero, Jesus. Now, for a little bit of context,

even though part one has the most of it, Zacchaeus, the name Zacchaeus means innocent or not

guilty, pure. And yet, ironically, his life is the exact opposite.

Zakias is a crook. He's a stealer. He's a thief. He's a manipulator.

And yet Jesus befriends him in a magnificent way, in a significant way. He stays at his house.

We think he's like a guest overnight at Zakias's home.

Now, Zakias is a Jewish man who's in cahoots with Rome to extend taxation on a city named Jericho.

And this is how it works. He extends taxation to the city of Jericho. He gets Rome's taxes,

but then he adds extra taxes that he fills his own pockets with. The Jews hate him. They despise him.

They don't like him at all. But as the story unfolds in Luke chapter 19, Zakias has heard about this

...